Sony has today released firmware v3.40 for PlayStation 3 owners. There’s several new features, but the main one has to be the introduction of PlayStation Plus.

Plus is a paid-for subscription service officially announced earlier this month by Sony. It lives on top of PSN which will remain free with all the features it currently has. Those choosing to subscribe will be offered a range of games for free, PlayStation Store discounts, exclusive demos, betas, early purchase options, full-game trials, and automatic downloads. There’s also free monthly episodes of the Qore show. 3 month and one-year subscriptions are on offer at a cost of $17.99 and $49.99 respectively, but Sony is offering 15 months in the one year price. The PlayStation Blog did a detailed rundown of PlayStation Plus features if you want to know more.

Other additions include the Photo Gallery getting a photo sharing feature that interacts with Facebook and Picasa Web Album. Sharing is allowed through those services as well as with your PSN friends. The XrossMediaBar now has a Video Editor & Uploader allowing for video files to be edited on your PS3 and then shared in much the same way as the Photo Gallery feature does.

Regular PS Store visitors will be pleased to hear it’s now possible to rate content with one to five stars. If there’s a game you aren’t sure about, now it’s probably going to have a star rating telling you whether it’s worth buying.

Sony has also seen fit to push forward with more Facebook integration. A new Facebook app will allow you to integrate your PSN profile with the social network and link up with PSN friends through it. Friend requests can be made through Facebook and then appear on your PS3 as PSN friends.

Finally there’s new power saving options allowing you to tweak when the PS3 automatically switches off, for example.

It will be interesting to see how well PlayStation Plus does. Sony is offering quite a bit of free stuff for paying $50 every year. WipEout HD looks to be free, and then free games will be made available from the PSP minis and PS One Classics ranges. However, the games are only yours to play while a Plus account is active. Cancel the account and lose those free games.

The other new features with firmware 3.4 are nothing special. The video editor may be popular, but I don’t like the Facebook integration. I can see why Sony are doing it as it’s free advertising for them, and if your friends have a PS3 and are advertising it on Facebook you are more likely to go and get one. Thankfully it’s optional, so ignore it if you like.